Quechua women in Ollantaytambo village in Peru. Photograph: Esteban Felix/AP

The world’s linguistic map is a colourful patchwork. From the tip of the Arctic to the remote villages of sub-saharan Africa, 6,000 languages are spoken across the globe. But according to Unesco, if nothing is done to protect them, half of these languages will have disappeared by the end of this century.

In the Andean region of South America, the struggles of one language in particular may hold potential lessons for other endangered languages. The Amerindian language of Quechua has a reach that stretches across southern Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. It dates back 2,000 years, dominated the communication of the Incas, and today is used by more people – about 8 million – than any other indigenous language in all of the Americas, according to Professor Rosaleen Howard, chair of Hispanic Studies in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University.

But like so many other languages, Quechua is under threat. In certain areas it has disappeared completely, according to Howard, who specialises in the language. One such area is the mountainous province of Huarochiri in the department of Lima, Peru. “Back in the colonial period there was a priest who documented all the different myths and oral traditions ... But today if you go to that region, the language is no longer spoken”, said Howard, adding that they now speak Spanish.

Quechua’s history is long, its trajectory diverse. According to the estimates of historical linguists, it dates back to a small area in the central Andes, in what is now Peru. Over the course of some 1,000 years, it was common for Quechua speakers to be in close contact with speakers of Aymara, another indigenous language in the region, and this has very much influenced its trajectory. “There’s been a kind of bifurcation in Quechua”, Howard explained, adding: “One could say that the diversity of Quechua weakens its chances of survival to some extent.” An example of this is that the Peruvian government has mainly focused its preservation efforts on the southern varieties of the language and less on those that are concentrated in central Peru.

Survival chances

Quechua’s demise is now in a vicious cycle. Howard pointed out that many rural Andeans will have faced strong discrimination in educational opportunities and employment because of speaking Quechua rather than Spanish. “When people move from rural areas to the cities they need Spanish in order to get jobs and education; there is no alternative.”

It’s a reality that has been passed down over generations. Many rural Andeans, thinking it best for their children, tell them they won’t get anywhere in life without Spanish and more and more frequently refuse to speak Quechua with them. The paradox here is that among more educated people, there’s currently a strong push for language revitalisation. But away from the urban elites, ordinary people aren’t aware of this, said Howard.

“The people who push for language revitalisation tend to be the more educated people who are bilingual. They have acquired Spanish through migration to the cities and getting into higher education.”

She added that rural people are often not even aware that their languages are under threat, as they continue to speak them in their everyday lives. “It is only when there are incursions onto their land by colonisers, or when they and their children want to migrate to the cities that the need for Spanish occurs.”

Lessons from Bolivia

Various efforts are being made to preserve Quechua. Multilingual education (MLE), which allows children to learn in their mother tongue throughout early years of schooling, while gradually introducing the official language as a second language, has been in place for all indigenous people in Bolivia since an education reform in 1994.

But while the aim was to encourage cultural understanding and promote a more respectful society, Howard is critical of how MLE was rolled out in Bolivia. “One of the reasons those programmes don’t work fully is that the indigenous people feel yet again is that it’s a way of keeping them separate from society.”

Howard highlighted a government initiative in Bolivia that she believes does work. When the constitution was revised in 2009 it decreed that all 37 languages of the country were official. It became a requirement that all state employees had to know at least one indigenous language. For employability, she said, this is a step in the right direction. “Nowadays, there really are lots of openings for people who speak not just Spanish but also one of the indigenous languages”, she said.

More recently in Bolivia, it has become a legal requirement for civil servants to speak an indigenous language in addition to Spanish if they want to keep their jobs: “There are government sponsored training courses which are making an impact without a doubt. Also, teaching of these languages in higher education is on the rise and their use in TV and media is increasing.”

So why is it so important to protect and preserve languages like Quechua? For Howard, the protection of indigenous languages is a matter of human rights: “It comes home to how unjust it is that people should live in a society where they have been forced to abandon those languages or suppress them in favour of speaking this dominant tongue”.